CFP: [20th] MSAX Panel: Modernism and the Postwar South

full name / name of organization:

Jordan Dominy

contact email:

jjdominy@ufl.edu

In After Southern Modernism (2000), Matthew Guinn notes that southern writers of the last thirtyyears have made a decisive break with the traditions and politics of 1930s Southern Renascencemodernism. They are best understood, he argues, through their discontinuity rather thancontinuity with the region and cultures labeled as the South. This description suggests that thereis no transitional moment between Renascence modernism and southern postmodernism. Butwhat of the intervening postwar generation of Southern writers and intellectuals? Of them, Guinnsays they exhibit â€œattenuated modernist techniquesâ€ that â€œtenuouslyâ€ maintain the traditions ofthe Renascence.

This panel seeks to investigate modernism(s) of the postwar South. Like the authors Guinnaddresses, key figures associated with the South were in some ways turning their interestselsewhere during this period: John Crowe Ransomâ€™s Kenyon Review became nationally andinternationally influential during this time. William Faulkner published A Fable (1954), whichtakes place in World War I France and wins national critical acclaim in the form of his firstPulitzer Prize. The New Criticism, driven by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren amongothers, took literature departments by storm. Moreover, the anti-communism common amongsouthern intellectuals became an asset to U.S. political interests in the early years of the ColdWar, and as Leigh Anne Duck explains in The Nationâ€™s Region (2006), â€œthe idea of a distinctsouthern identity became popular among national elites as a ballast for an increasinglyconformist and progress-oriented nation.â€ Does this South, constructed as a rampart from whichto defend a national culture from consumerism and communism, comport with the Renascencemodernism? If the late 1940s and 1950s are not an extension of Renascence modernism, whatkind of modernism becomes prevalent, then? Are the formalist projects of the Agrarians-turned-New Critics an indicator of late modernism? Could postwar modernism or Cold Warmodernism be used to describe these developments in southern culture? And how could thesemodernisms be helpful in understanding perceived â€œsouthernâ€ influences in popular culture,such as rock â€˜nâ€™ roll and country music, television, and film during this time?

Papers investigating modernism(s) in any aspect or form of postwar southern culture, especiallyat its intersections with national or global cultures, are welcome.

Please send proposed paper titles, 350-word abstracts, and a brief (2-3 sentence) scholarlybiography to Jordan Dominy at jjdominy_at_ufl.edu by May 1, 2008. The annual conference of theModernist Studies Association takes place in Nashville, TN from 13-16 November 2008. Theconference website is http://www.vanderbilt.edu/msax/.